Really? Really-Really? Who falls for this?

Let’s start with the email I received:

From: Nick John (Punkieu@gmail.com)

Sent: Friday, November 23, 2012 4:10 PM

To: Punkieu@gmail.com

Subject: event

Hello,

We are coming from Sri Lanka to Canada for our end of the year tourist trip and we have also decided to have our end of the year get to together staff party in your city as well and your photography service will be needed for this party and I need all the pictures on DVD.

The party will come up on 20th of December and the time frame will be 2pm-6pm approximately. 20-30 guest are expected for this event. We will be lodging and celebrate our staff end of the year party in an hotel around you,but i will inform you about hotel

address prior to our arrival.

Please be inform that we just want to make all arrangement and to secure the booking of all event vendors needed for this party before our arrival because the event date is coming close and we are also going towards the end of the year festive period. So

kindly get back to me with your quote as soon as possible to enable me secure your booking prior to our arrival.

I await your prompt response.

Thanks

Dr Anita

Anitarichard12@rocketmail.com

kindly reply through the above email.

Any time I receive an unsolicited email to my work account, no matter how atrocious the spelling and/or grammar, I Google any names and email addresses included. Of course, there’s more red flags in this email, but a quick Google usually reveals far more about the sender than they wish be known.

There’s also a great website list that I search: http://www.photographersdirect.com/sellers/email_scammers.asp The webmasters have done a great job of listing as many known email scammers who target photographers. According to their site:

This page shows a list of email addresses used by scammers targeting photographers. The scams are generally advance payment scams – they ask you to do a job (wedding shoot, anniversary party, fashion shoot etc), agree a price and send you advance payment in the form of a cheque/money-order etc. The payment will be much larger than the amount agreed and they will then ask you to forward the difference to someone else. The original cheque will then bounce and you will have lost the money you forwarded.

The email address used by the above-noted scammer Nick John, punkieu@gmail.com, produces 179 hits on Google. Anita Richard, however, generates 146,000 hits. Not only does she want to part you and your money, but it appears from the search results that poor Anita needs a boyfriend.

Please, do your due diligence before hitting the “Reply” button. You just never know who’s on the other end of that connection!

For more resources, check out this Google search.

© Will Prentice, 2012. All rights reserved.